Читать книгу Bess of Hardwick and Her Circle - Maud Stepney Rawson - Страница 14

Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS’ APARTMENTS AND DUNGEONS AT TUTBURY Page 66

It did not take Shrewsbury and his lady long to realise what they had undertaken to nourish in their bosom. The great thing was to distract her with light and little things. Of these she had sufficient at first to prevent her from much brooding in the intervals of writing her vivid and endless letters to France, to Scotland, to Burghley, and to the English Queen. Gentleman visitors being practically taboo, there remained only the Countess of Shrewsbury as a set-off from Mary’s own ladies. These were few—Mrs. Bruce and Lady Livingston, who was ailing, while of the “four Maries,” whose beauty and grace helped to weave the romantic legend of the vanished Court at Holyrood, there remained in the royal service but one, Mary Seton. Her Queen took a special interest in her, and was very dependent on her. Mary Seton surely knew her mistress through and through. Her post must at times have been one of great risk and mental torture. She was constantly in personal attendance, dealing with the Queen’s wardrobe and dressing her hair—for in this, history says, she was as clever as any skilled perruquier. Mary at first scarcely had a rag to cover her. Two bits of black velvet and some darned underclothing had been doled out to her, by Elizabeth, on her arrival in England. Much scorn and merriment they surely caused in the Scotch Queen’s closet! Clothing to wrap her, hangings—that veritable “rampart” of tapestries of which Mary spoke in the letter quoted—were necessary for her existence, and she would have her environment gracious and artistic even if the tapestries were of sacking. With the aid, no doubt, of Bess the chatelaine, some appearance of regality was contrived and maintained—so the letters of the day show—as best might be. The Shrewsburys had no objection to that. Everyone entered apparently on the surface into the little game of make-believe which “this Queen here” (as she is constantly described in letters from the houses in which she was immured) played throughout the fifteen years of her life under the Earl’s roof. For Mary was ever an arch-romanticist. This sense of romance constituted two-thirds of her attraction. Both Queens were playing waiting games, but Mary was determined to play hers effectively in spite of all conditions. And thus we have that vivid picture of her pretence court carried on under the eye of Bess Shrewsbury. The Scots Queen, seated on her dais under her canopy bearing the elusive legend “En ma fin est mon commencement,” issued her orders touching her household, received eagerly all scraps of news which filtered through to her and any visitors that were permitted. But the more interesting part was that of the Earl’s lady, who stood as the social barrier between the outer world, so full of stirring incident, and the mock court indoors. How much to tell her Scottish majesty and how little, what gossip to retail and what to suppress, was no light task for a talkative, energetic lady, who knew the ins and outs not only of the English Court but the character of its mistress. Mary was always good company. Elizabeth gave her subjects plenty to talk about. One wonders, in the light of a certain letter which Mary afterwards wrote to the Queen, how far^[15] Bess Shrewsbury allowed her tongue at this juncture to trip out of sheer vivacity and desire to please her prisoner-guest. Just now, however, it is too early to imagine intrigue in this direction. The women could safely discuss clothes and the new fashion of doing the hair. Mary Seton was acknowledged to be the best “busker of hair in any country,” “and every other day she had a new device of head-dressing, without any cost, and yet setteth forth a woman gaily well.” Mary loved her wigs, her headdresses, embroidery, her little pets, and the contriving of presents of needlework. With these Bess could sympathise. On occasion she wanted French silks, and when Mary wrote to France a list of goods which she desired, she would send for a length of silk for my Lady, and a friendly transaction took place between the two. Truly a charming relationship! And all the time Mary was not too bored, for she was writing love letters to her new suitor—the Duke of Norfolk.

Let us take in the political situation for a moment. It was the spring of 1569—just two years since the murder of Darnley, since when Mary had the impression of a procession of violent events to wipe out of her mind. Events since that horrible night had travelled at a wild speed. Her abasement before Bothwell, her desperate game of bluff—that is to say, her mad marriage with him, in spite of the opposition of all her friends, while she yet wore her discreet mourning for the wretched Darnley—her sudden awakening to bare realities, and the shock of the knowledge that she had given herself wholly to a mere adventurer, and a brutal one at that—these were some of the sinister facts over which, in this solitude and stillness of her English life, she had time enough to brood. Then came the final revelation of the almost wholesale perfidy of her Scottish noblemen, and the three weeks of her ghastly third honeymoon, which amounted to nothing but a preliminary imprisonment, ending in the gross insults of the populace, which drove her distracted on her way to the fortress of Lochleven. The detection and flight of Bothwell, her Scottish imprisonment, her escape and her flight to England—all these were part of the crimson pageant from which she had emerged, shattered in body, soul-worn, to face the problem of her life. Her baby boy was far from her in the hands of her brother and worst enemy, Earl Moray, the traitor to whom the power of Elizabeth gave approval as regent. But Moray himself had executed a volte-face. For his own purposes he now assumed a highly moral and affectionate tone towards his kinswoman. He advised this, her fourth marriage, on the score that it was the best chance of wiping out the stigma which clung to her in connection with her passion for Bothwell and her illegal union with him. “Take a suitable and godly person to be your spouse and you will at once assume a very high place in my excellent esteem” was practically his attitude. Mary knew his power. Was not the villain in constant intercourse with Cecil, Elizabeth’s right hand? She knew also that marriage was the only way out of prison and back to her throne. Three husbands had failed her. Even Moray conceded that she “had been troubled in times past with children, young, proud fools, and furious men”—the anæmic Francis II, Darnley, and Bothwell. As a woman she could attract any man she chose. And the Duke of Norfolk was one of the premier gentlemen of England, inclined to espouse her faith, and had powerful friends among the nobles near the Border. The plan was exciting. France and Spain must back her up in it. It was very difficult to send and receive letters. No wonder that the strain of this secret, with the bad weather and the difficulties under which the Tutbury household laboured of securing sufficient provisions and sufficient fuel to warm the cranky building, resulted in the illness of the prisoner.

After much letter-writing there came from Court the permission for removal for which the Earl and Mary longed. The household was to take up its abode now at Wingfield Manor. Away went my Lady ahead to put up the curtains and see to the carpets and pallets and other upholstery, and a week or two later away went the cavalcade after her. Her chatelaine’s art and dexterity had freer play here. Wingfield Manor, in its ruins, suggests a house of grace, comfort, and importance, well proportioned, and soundly built in a stately manner. Even Mary, aware of its tolerably fortified nature, its guardroom and dungeons, its massive keep and earthworks, conscious of the nightly sentinels under her windows, could call it “a fair palace.” And my Lady was surely in her element. It was not exactly the rich domestic peace, the family life for which she or her husband had bargained. They were forced to isolate themselves from their children to a great extent, lest the comings and goings connected with their own family should entice strangers or messengers of doubtful character. But the eyes of England were upon the Earl and his lady. Where Mary was there abounded romance, intrigue, and mystery. Spain, France, Scotland, all were watchful, waiting for the least news. And possibly the Queen’s command and the distinction conferred on the Shrewsburys carried them far along the painful task on which they had embarked. There is no doubt that Bess had a better time of it in the bargain than her lord. The ultimate responsibility was his. Moreover, his was a nature conscientious almost to a morbid degree. He was forced to receive attacks without and within and to keep his head cool. He must report himself in long letters to Mr. Treasurer, he must bear with the complaints and entreaties of his captive. Mary was not so much of a prisoner that she could not rush to his suite of rooms and upbraid the authority by which her Scottish messengers were detained and her letters examined. Her abuse and lamentation, defiance and tears were shared alike by husband and wife. In reporting all this in detail to the Court, he insists upon the necessity of his wife’s co-operation. In the same breath he makes it piteously clear that the matter is not one for diversion or satisfaction to either of them. In this picture he draws of their joint life in such letters, Tutbury or Wingfield shelters not one prisoner, but three. The royal lady is scarcely a moment out of their sight or hearing. The only advantage of her constant invasion of my Lady’s chamber is that the latter may watch her the more closely and report more minutely upon her looks and words.